“State Fairgrounds! End of the line!” the trolley driver announced, and loudly clanged his bell.
“End of the line for Wade Hampton, all right,” Pinkard said, and the other Freedom Party men laughed wolfishly.
Caleb Briggs, the dentist who headed the Freedom Party in Birmingham, was marshaling his forces at the edge of the fairgrounds. “Won’t be easy this time, boys,” he rasped in his gas-ruined voice. “Goddamn governor got wind of what we had in mind and called out the goddamn militia. Anything we want, we’re going to have to take.”
Pinkard looked west across the rolling, grassy countryside to the platform from which President Hampton would speak. Sure enough, there were men in butternut and old-fashioned gray uniforms along with those in shirtsleeves or black civilian coats. The sun glinted off bayonets. He’d seen that too many times in Texas to mistake it for anything else.
Suddenly, the club in his hand didn’t seem such a wonderful weapon at all. He asked, “We move on those sons of bitches, they going to open up on us?”
“I don’t know,” Briggs answered. “Only one way to find out, though, and that’s what we’re going to do.” He raised his voice: “Anybody who hasn’t got the balls to go forward, run along home to mama. The rest of us, we’ll see if those summer soldiers mean it or if they’ll fold when we come at ’em. Nobody’s stopped us yet. My bet is, nobody can. Let’s go.”
Everybody advanced. Pinkard’s mouth was dry, as it had been when he came up out of the trenches, but he kept going. It wasn’t that he lacked fear: far more that he feared letting his comrades know he was afraid. If they didn’t feel the same way, he’d have been astonished. On they came, through the ankle-high grass, past the little groves of shade trees planted here and there on the fairgrounds. The muggy heat accounted for only some of the sweat on Jeff’s face.
The militiamen deployed to meet the Freedom Party stalwarts. They were outnumbered, but they had the rifles and the bayonets and the helmets. Pinkard didn’t like the way they moved. Their manner said they were not about to give way for anything or anybody.
To applause from the smallish crowd in front of him, President Hampton began to speak. Pinkard paid scant heed to his amplified words. Why bother? They’d be full of lies anyhow. The major moving out ahead of the militiamen was more important. The fellow held up a hand. “You men halt right there,” he said. “This is your first, last, and only warning.”
“Hold up, boys,” Caleb Briggs said, and the Freedom Party men obeyed him, not the militia major. He spoke to the officer: “Who are you to tell us we can’t protest against the so-called policies of the government in Richmond?”
“You can stay right here,” the major answered. “You can shout your fool heads off. I don’t give a damn about that. If you take one step forward from where you stand now, I will assume you are attempting to riot, not to protest, and I will order you shot down like dogs. Those are my orders, and I shall carry them out. So will my men. If you think we are bluffing, sir, I invite you to try us.”
Jeff didn’t think the major was bluffing. The soldiers behind him looked ready, even eager, to open fire. The governor had picked with care the troops he’d activated. Caleb Briggs came to the same conclusion. “You’ll pay for this, Major, when the day comes,” he hissed.
“If you take that step, sir, you’ll pay for it now,” the major told him. “Your ruffians have gotten away with too many things for too long. You will not get away with anything today, by God. You may do what the law allows. If you do even a single thing the law does not allow, you will pay for it.”
The stalwarts jeered him and hooted at him and cursed him. He seemed to worry about that no more than a man with a good slicker and a broad-brimmed hat worried about going out in the rain. And not one of the Freedom Party men took the step forward that would have made the officer issue his fatal order.
“All right, boys,” Briggs said. “Maybe we won’t give Hampton the tyrant what-for today in person. But we can let him know what we think of him, right? This here country still has freedom of speech.”
“Freedom!” was the chant they raised, a loud and mocking chant. Jefferson Pinkard bellowed out the word as ferociously as he could, doing everything in his power to drown out the president of the Confederate States. As far as he was concerned, Jake Featherston should have been up on the platform a few hundred yards away. He would have told the truth, not the bland lies Wade Hampton V spewed forth. The bland crowd ate them up, too, and cheered Hampton almost as if they had true spirit.
“Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!” All the stalwarts were roaring, doing their best to show Hampton and show the world the militia hadn’t cowed them.
Maybe next time we’ll bring rifles, too,
Pinkard thought. It had almost come to that during the presidential campaign. After fighting the damnyankees, he did not shy away from fighting his own government. “Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!”
When the first shot rang out from the grove of hackberry trees off to the right of the Freedom Party men, Jeff didn’t hear it. But he saw Wade Hampton V stagger on the platform and clutch at his chest. He did hear the second shot. That second bullet must have caught Hampton in the head or the heart, for he stopped staggering and went down as if all his bones had turned to water.
A few of the stalwarts whooped when the president of the Confederate States fell. Most, though, Pinkard among them, stared in the horrified silence that filled the crowd of Hampton’s backers. Men dashed across the platform to the president’s side. Jeff didn’t think they’d be able to do much for him. He’d seen too many men go down in that boneless way during the Great War. Hardly any of them ever got up again.
From the hackberry grove came a wild, exultant shout: “Freedom!”
“Sergeant Davenport! Sergeant Sullivan!” the militia major rapped out. “Take your troops in among those trees and bring that man to me. I don’t care whether he’s breathing or not, but bring him to me.”
Two squads of militiamen trotted toward the hackberries. Another shot rang out. A man fell. Another shot from the trees—this one a miss, the bullet whining past not far from Pinkard. Without conscious thought, he threw himself flat. A lot of Freedom Party men and a lot of militiamen did the same. The advancing militiamen opened fire on the grove.
Caleb Briggs stayed on his feet. More than gas roughened his voice as he said, “That man is not one of ours, Major. My God, I—”
One of the dignitaries on the platform walked up to the microphone. “President Hampton is dead.” He sounded astonished, disbelieving.
Jeff understood that. He felt stunned and empty himself. He’d been ready—he’d been eager—to fight for the Freedom Party, but this…No one had murdered—
assassinated,
he supposed was the proper word—a president in the history of the Confederate States, or in the history of the United States before the Confederacy seceded.
Drawing his pistol, the militia major aimed it at Briggs. More shots came from the hackberries. Another militiaman went down with a shriek. But some of the others were in among the trees. The major ignored that action. Infinite bitterness filled his voice: “Not one of yours, you say? He shouts your shout. He uses your methods. Politics was not war till the Freedom Party made it so.”
“Now listen here—” Briggs began.
Triumphant cries rang out from the hackberry grove. Through them, the major said, “No, sir. You listen to me. Get your rabble out of here by the count of five, or I will turn my men loose on them and we will have a massacre the likes of which this country has never seen. Maybe it’s one we should have had a couple of years ago—then things wouldn’t have come to this. One…two…three—”
“Go home, boys,” Caleb Briggs said quickly. His face was gray. “For the love of God, go home. There’s been enough blood spilled today.”
“Too much,” the militia major said. “Far too much. You disappoint me, Mr. Briggs. I would have liked to shoot you down.”
Briggs stood silent, letting himself be reviled. As Jefferson Pinkard got to his feet, militiamen came out of the hackberry grove. They were dragging a body by the feet. The corpse wore butternut trousers and a green shirt, now soaked with blood. The gunman must have been almost invisible in among the trees. Jeff stared at his long, pale, sharp-nosed face. He’d seen that face at Party meetings, not regularly, but every so often. The fellow was named Grady…Grady Something-or-other. Jeff knew he’d talked with him, but couldn’t remember his surname.
From the appalled looks on other Party stalwarts’ faces, he knew they also recognized the assassin. The militia major saw that, too. “Not one of yours, eh?” he repeated. “Another lie. Get out of my sight before I forget myself.”
Briggs went. Jeff stumbled after him, along with his comrades. Someone close by was moaning. After a moment, he realized it was himself.
What do we—what do I—do now?
he wondered.
Sweet suffering Jesus, what do I do now?
Anne Colleton was frying chicken for supper when her brother came into the kitchen of the large apartment they still shared. She started to greet him, then got a good look at his face. She hadn’t seen that kind of dazed, horrified expression since the war. Above the cheerful crackling of the chicken, she asked, “My God, Tom, what’s gone wrong?”
By way of answer, he held up the copy of the
Columbia South Carolinian
he carried under his arm. The headline was enormous and very, very black:
PRESIDENT MURDERED IN BIRMINGHAM!!!
Under it, a half-page subhead said,
FREEDOM PARTY ASSASSIN SHOT DEAD AT ALABAMA STATE FAIRGROUNDS
.
“My God,” Anne said again. “Oh, my God.” Mechanically, she kept turning the floured chicken in the hot fat.
“I think you’d better do the same with your investments in the Freedom Party as you did with your Confederate investments right after the war,” Tom told her, “and that’s get rid of ’em. This time tomorrow, Jake Featherston’s going to be worth less than a Confederate dollar, and that’s saying something.”
She shook her head. “Featherston would never order that kind of thing.”
“I didn’t say he did, though I wouldn’t put it past him if he thought he could get away with it,” Tom replied. “But that hasn’t got anything to do with it. You think what he ordered or didn’t order matters? Only thing that matters is, one of his people pulled the trigger. Who’s going to vote for a party that blows the head off the president if they don’t care what he’s up to?”
“No one,” Anne said dully. Tom was right. She wasn’t so naive as to pretend otherwise. She’d been riding the crest of the Freedom Party wave up and up and up. She’d been sure she could ride it all the way into the president’s residence in Richmond. And so she could have. She remained certain of that. But now…“The son of a bitch,” she whispered. “The stupid son of a bitch.”
“Who? The late Grady Calkins?” Tom said. “You bet he was a stupid son of a bitch. But who built a whole party out of stupid sons of bitches? Who aimed ’em at the country and fired ’em off, first with bare knuckles and then with clubs and pistols? You know who as well as I do, Sis. Is it any wonder one of ’em picked up a Tredegar and decided to go president hunting?”
Anne had never thought, never dreamt, such a thing might happen. That didn’t necessarily mean it was any wonder, though, not when you looked at it the way her brother suggested. “What do we do now?” she said. She rarely asked for advice, but her mind remained blank with shock.
Tom didn’t have a lot of help to offer. “I don’t know,” he said. “You burned a lot of bridges when you went with Featherston. How the devil do you propose to get back across them?”
“I don’t know, either,” Anne said. “Maybe things will straighten out somehow.” Even to herself, she didn’t sound as if she believed that. Hot lard splashed up and bit the back of her hand. She swore with a fervor that wrung a couple of embarrassed chuckles from her brother.
The chicken was ready a few minutes later. In the years since Marshlands burned, she’d turned into a pretty fair cook. Before then, she’d have had trouble boiling water. But she took no pleasure in crispy skin or moist, juicy, flavorsome flesh. She hardly noticed what she ate, as a matter of fact: the chicken was bones and the baked potato that went with it reduced to its jacket without any apparent passage of time.
After supper, Tom pulled a bottle of whiskey from the shelf where it sat. That, Anne noticed. “Pour me a slug, too, will you?” she asked.
“I sure will.” He did. Anne wanted to drink to the point of oblivion, but refrained. Far more than most in the Confederate States, she appreciated the value of a clear head. But oh, the temptation!
As she drank the one drink she allowed herself, she read the newspaper Tom had brought home. Grady Calkins was an out-of-work veteran who’d belonged to the Freedom Party. Past that, the reporters hadn’t found out much about him. That was plenty. That was more than plenty.
“He shouted ‘Freedom!’ after he shot Hampton down,” Tom said, as if to rub salt in the wound.
“Yes, I read that,” Anne answered. “It’s a disaster. I admit it. I don’t see how I can deny it. It’s a disaster every way you look at it.”
“It sure is,” Tom said. “God only knows what kind of president Burton Mitchel will make.”
“I don’t think anybody outside of Arkansas knows anything about Burton Mitchel, maybe including God,” Anne said. Tom let out a startled snort of laughter. Anne went on, “The Whigs plucked him out of the Senate to balance the ticket; Featherston would have done the same thing if he’d chosen Willy Knight. All Mitchel was supposed to do was sit there for the next six years.”
“He’ll do more than that now,” her brother said. “Christ, a backwoods bumpkin running the country till 1927. Just what we need!”
“Look on the bright side,” Anne told him.
“I didn’t know there was any bright side
to
look on,” Tom answered.
“Of course there is. There always is,” Anne said. “The bright side here is: how could things get any worse?”
“That’s a point,” Tom acknowledged. “The other side of the coin is, now we get to find out how things get worse.”